becomes convinced that his friend Sherlock Holmes is delusional—particularly in his belief that Professor James Moriarty is a criminal mastermind—as a result of his addiction to cocaine. Moriarty visits Watson to complain about being harassed by Holmes. Watson enlists the aid of Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, to trick Holmes into traveling to Vienna, where he will be treated by Sigmund Freud. During the course of his treatment, Holmes investigates a kidnapping case with international implications and Freud uncovers a dark personal secret suppressed in Holmes's subconscious.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was well received by American critics and currently holds a 79% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 14 reviews. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "nothing less than the most exhilarating entertainment of the film year to date." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars out of four and called it "the classiest motion picture of the holiday season" and "a rare combination of money and brains." He placed it ninth on his year-end list of the best films of 1976. Arthur D. Murphy of Variety called it "an outstanding film. Producer-director Herbert Ross and writer Nicholas Meyer, adapting his novel, have fashioned a most stylish, elegant and classy period crime drama." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It is a particularly handsome period piece, beautifully staged and acted and most genuinely charming." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called the film "an amusing, elegant and unusually appealing adventure movie, a swashbuckler with literate, intellectual heroes." British reviewers were more critical with The Times calling it "a turgid concoction which draws no life from the Holmes/Freud confontation and seems particularly ill-plotted." The Daily Telegraph said "The tale drags on for reel after reel before we cotton on to the fact that it is meant to be funny." The Sunday Times said "the basic conflicts in Conan Doyle's original dissipate into whimsy, cuteness and slow, period-laden self-indulgence." Mike Hale of The New York Times, after mentioning Robert Downey Jr.'s version of Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock and Jonny Lee Miller in Elementary, opined that Nicol Williamson's Holmes was "the father of all those modern Holmeses" claiming the film "established the template for all the twitchy, paranoid, vulnerable, strung-out Holmeses to come."
released the film on Blu-ray on January 22, 2013 along with a DVD in the package. Meyer appeared in an 18-minute interview for the Blu-ray release by Shout Factory. Meyer discussed the genesis of the idea and how he took the opportunity to write the novel when the Writers Guild of America went on strike. Meyer revealed that he had often fought with Ross because Ross was too faithful to Meyer's novel. He believed that the script would not be cinematic enough if it was too faithful with the source. He discussed the casting including his push for Alan Arkin as Freud. He shared a story about how he and Ross decided to cast Duvall "in revolt" against Nigel Bruce's portrayal of Watson as a "Colonel Blimp" type character. Meyer and Ross wanted to try and capture Watson's intelligence that had so far not been portrayed on screen in Holmes movie adaptations.
